It turns out 2024 didn’t kick off to an extraterrestrial start, after all.
Miami police shut down wild rumors that a 10-foot-tall alien was roaming the Floridian city on New Year’s Day after the conspiracy theory ran rampant on social media.
“There were no aliens, UFOs, or ETs,” the department confirmed Friday.
The speculation was ignited after a video circulating online seemingly captured a massive figure strolling outside Bayside Marketplace, a shopping mall in downtown Miami, that was surrounded by dozens of police cruisers with their lights flashing.
But the truth behind the grainy, zoomed-in footage taken from several stories above is much less otherworldly, according to cops.
“It’s a shadow of a person walking. If you look at the beginning of the clip, you can see the person at the bottom of the shadow,” Officer Michael Vega said in a statement.
“If there was any creature, myself and other officers would have our handgun, rifle, and shotgun out while we hide behind our cars.”
The real cause of the massive police presence was in response to reports that a group of more than 50 juveniles possibly armed with sticks were fighting in the mall.
The rabble-rousers had also set off fireworks, leading many people inside the mall to run in fear that a shooting had broken out.
Even after cops arrived, the group refused to leave. Some of the many responding officers worked to control the kids, while others worked to control the distressed crowds.
The mayhem was such that businesses temporarily shut down until cops were able to remove the troublemakers.
“The juveniles were causing chaos,” Vega said.
Four teenagers were arrested for causing the massive ordeal, according to NBC Miami.
The simple answer did little to quell the rumors circulating on social media, however.
“10ft Aliens/Creatures (caught on camera?) fired at inside and outside Miami Mall, media silent, cops are covering it up saying kids were fighting with fireworks, yet all these cop cars, & air traffic stopped that night except for black military choppers…and no media coverage,” one user wrote on X.
“I’m not sure what part of this story bugs me most: the fact that we actually live in a world where something like this can happen … or that something like this can happen in our world or that not a single new media has broke the story, not at all,” one woman said on TikTok.
Others claimed they lost their power or WiFi in the hours following the ordeal, while some claimed the nearby airports were shut down — all of which Miami Police confirmed were false assertions.
Five days later, the #MiamiAlien is still trending on X.
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